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Press Release

On behalf of hundreds of thousands of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to VOTE NO on the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act. Unfortunately, the bill fails to address the problems that led to the current fiscal crisis and continues to use taxpayer dollars to bailout Wall Street. Even worse, the financial overhaul bill sets the stage for future financial meltdowns.

Instead of allowing free-market mechanisms to set the right incentives for banks to make prudent lending decisions —where those who may profit are also the ones who will pay the cost of their own failure—the bill sends the wrong message. It gives banks an incentive to partake in risky and high-reward lending choices by making others responsible for their failure. Due to the bill’s permanent bailout authority, the American taxpayers will be on the hook for poor decisions made by Wall Street. Despite rhetoric that this bill is “hard on Wall Street”, banks will not be held sufficiently responsible for their unwise investments.

It is embarrassing for Congressional leadership and unfortunate for the American people that this bill does absolutely nothing to rein in key instigators of the current economic fiasco: Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Instead of fixing Fannie and Freddie, the federal government will continue to allow them to function without consequences.

Adding insult to injury, this power-grabbing legislation will also add to our soaring national debt. During this fiscal crisis, our focus should be on cutting wasteful spending. However, the financial regulation bill will tack on more needless spending that future generations will be forced to pay for. According to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO), the financial regulation bill will cost an estimated $20.3 billion over the next ten years.

This bill calls for much of that money to come out of the “TARP” funds from the initial Wall Street bailout we advised voting against. Taxpayers were promised we would get our TARP dollars back. Instead, in a budgetary sleight of hand that only this congress could think is reasonable, TARP dollars will be used to “pay for” this scheme. The Senators planning to vote for this bill seem to forget that those aren’t free dollars in a slush fund for them to spend without consequence—those are our hard earned tax dollars. Taxpayers deserve better.

We will count your vote on cloture and final passage for S. 1776 as a KEY VOTE when calculating the FreedomWorks Economic Freedom Scorecard for 2010. The Economic Freedom Scorecard is used to determine eligibility for the Jefferson Award, which recognizes members of Congress with voting records that support economic freedom.

President Barack Obama delivered his sixth State of the Union address to Congress last night, laying out a litany of mostly terrible policy proposals, as well as attempting to defend his economic record. There's no denying that he's a strong orator who tells a story very well, but the substance of the speech itself was more of the same stale ideas and poor leadership that Americans have seen throughout the course of his presidency. Though there are plenty of policy items worthy of analysis, here are some lines that stuck out.

Old stereotypes die hard, regardless of their increasing inability to reflect reality. Consider the caricature of the corporate fat cat, clad cartoonishly in top hat and spats, building monopolies, crushing competition, exploiting workers and all the while lining his pockets with wads and wads of filthy lucre. Now quick, how do you think our straw industrialist will vote? If you said Republican, you’re not alone.

As one of our over 6 million FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your representative and ask him or her to vote NO on the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, H.R. 3370. This bill would delay much-needed reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program and inevitably result in a taxpayer bailout of that program.

As one of our over 6 million FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your senators and urge them to vote NO on the Homeowner Flood Insurance Affordability Act, S. 1926. Sponsored by Senator Robert Menendez (D-NJ), this bill would delay much-needed reforms to the National Flood Insurance Program and inevitably result in a taxpayer bailout of that program.

As one of our millions of FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your Representative today and urge him or her to support H.R. 3550, the “New Fair Deal Banking and Housing Stability Act of 2013,” and to co-sponsor the bill if he or she has not already done so.

Like malfunctioning clockwork, President Barack Obama's new budget proposal has arrived (a little late) to provide us all with some comic relief. Aptly referred to as a "fantasyland" by POLITICO's David Nather, President Obama's budget hikes taxes, expands federal interference in education, increases the minimum wage, and bails out another federal agency. Sound appealing?

Some pundits are saying that the big banks like JP Morgan and Bank of America are too big and need to be broken up, in sort of a preemptive antitrust enforcement. But it would be far better if we just let the free market work, as we should have been doing all along.

Dear FreedomWorks member,
As one of our million-plus FreedomWorks members nationwide, I urge you to contact your senator and ask him or her to cosponsor S. 1975, the “No More IMF Bailouts Act.” Introduced by Jim DeMint (R-SC), the bill would stop the International Monetary Fund (IMF) from using U.S. taxpayer dollars to bailout Eurozone nations like Greece and Italy. It would rescind a $108 billion line of credit to U.S. funds given to the IMF in 2009, force Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to veto future IMF bailouts, and stop a proposed doubling of U.S. dues to the IMF.

The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is a fundamentally flawed institution that currently serves as an international bailout fund. The global bureaucracy has spent decades bailing out reckless foreign countries and banks, of which most recently are Greece, Ireland and Portugal. But now reports are circulating that the IMF needs a bailout of their own.